“Abandon hope all ye who enter here” it says on the door…bloody right if you play it on the hardest difficulty level! So here’s an interesting concept, base a game on a 14th century Italian poem. Seeing that it’s actually a book I’ve read (which wasn’t The Rock’s autobiography) I was intrigued and actually bought this game at full price. Was it worth it? Yeah I think so.

Dante’s Inferno transmutes a toga wearing poet into a rampaging crusader which on second inspection is a massive anachronism seeing that the two separate events are chronologically 200 years apart, not that I’m picking holes! Dante’s Inferno is a hack ‘n’ slash game that awesomely sees the beginning sequence of Dante laying the smackdown on Death. Ok that’s kinda cool. What’s even more cool is you steal his scythe!

So yeah Dante returns from a gruelling war whereby he finds his father slain, rather comically may I add, and his naked fiancee rather compromisingly shafted with a sword. Then all of a sudden Noob Saibot appears out of the ether and runs off with the soul of the now deceased, and pornographically attired love interest. From then you descend into the raging inferno that appears in the ground and then come the waves of Hell’s minions.

Dante has essentially two attacks, scythe attacks which let you plough the hordes of enemies Dynasty Warriors style, and a Crucifix which lets you hadouken your enemies Super Ryu style back into oblivion. It did make me think, when you kill and enemy, where the fuck do they go?? You’re already in Hell!? Is Hell got a tiered system like some kind of demonic anti-promotion system? Or do you just wander in a parallel plain with a halo like in Dragonball Z? Who the fuck cares, I just want to kill stuff!

So yeah this game introduces the no-brainer piling into minions like a torrent of marbles in a pinball machine, yet seems to have a story line! The poor bloke batters his way through Hell for his woman who seems to become more ambivalent the further down you go. Ungrateful bitch. Well I’m not going to spoil the storyline because that’s not my style but no being a spoiler, you do see Dante’s cock at some point which I’d rather forget. Seeing Beatrice’s boobs was fine but protagonist appendages can be left out in future please!

I don’t really have many negative things to say about this game apart from the camera control, or rather, lack of camera control. I was in this beautifully designed arena of woe and I wanted to pan about and check it out. However moving the right analog stick just caused me to evasively roll like a hedgehog in a tumble dryer. On top of the fact that half the jumps are impossible 90% of the time and it just resurrected memories of control pad launching because Mario the retarded plumber never had the sense to grab hold of the ledge if it was just short! Half the time the enemies were off the screen so spamming the holy sonic boom button caused you to rack up a huge combo of death on adversaries that weren’t even visible!

The other thing interesting is the Absolve/Punish game for the lost souls dotted throughout the game. Punishing them would evoke a gratuitously violent scene involving a large blade and someone’s face and absolution resulted in holy guitar hero which involved catching sins in a crucifix. This sped up as it went along but seeing that I can play Carry On Wayward Son on expert this wasn’t too hard! I don’t know if this was trying to be subliminal and attempting to make the player religious, well it didn’t work on me! However I did notice that I must be a homophobe because when I was in the circle of hell which housed the sodomites, I actually chose to punish them all! Well technically sodomy includes fornicating animals so I feel a tiny bit vindicated for punishing backwards people who bum goats and people from Portsmouth.

So in conclusion, I enjoyed Dante’s Inferno immensely as it brought something new to the table with its awesome story telling and beautiful game design. Quite glad I chose this game over Darksiders, I played the demo and it was just a billy-one move game involving a nazgul with a final fantasy sized sword and a gimpy skeleton in his Ben 10 watch.